Magic.
And I think it is a finer magic than Master’s, for what is his magic good for? It is good for making servants and punishing them; yes, and for punishing his own daughter, too, punishing her almost to death. It is good for freeing Ariel, and that is good for no one but Ariel and Master, and Ariel is still angry at being a servant anyway. But Miranda’s magic, oh! Such colors! Such men! Such women! Such creatures!
I did like it when Miranda did draw bugs and birds and flowers on her slate before, but those are things I have seen and know, and these pictures are so big and grand; and they are things I have never seen and I do not know how Miranda can see them in her head. What is the great coiled thing like a winged serpent beneath the bright-faced man’s feet? I do not know, and yet I know pieces of it: snake, bat, lizard. How does it become a whole?
To watch her make a picture is like listening to a story, like the stories Miranda did tell me sometimes about the pictures that the stars in the sky make at night, stories that Master did tell her.
They are beautiful.
She is beautiful.
I would watch her every moment of every day, but the longer I stay, the more it may be that Master will see me and punish me; and there are chores to be done, hey-ho, for Caliban is a servant, the poor dumb monster. So I fetch wood and figs and fish like a good servant, I gather acorns and honey and sour oranges, I obey and I am quiet and good, oh so good, that Master does not think about me.
Miranda …
Oh, oh, oh.
It is hard, so hard, to be cold when I am not. The hurt on her face makes my heart hurt inside me.
I do not like for her to look at me, not anymore; and it is not safe for me to look at her. Only when Miranda does not know I am there and looking, only when she is making magic pictures on the walls of Master’s sanctum and her face is pure and dreaming and holy, and I do not think about Miranda naked with her tender little breasts with their pink tips hanging down above the wash-basin.
Oh, Setebos! I am bad.
But I am not only the badness within me that yearns and thinks of rutting like a goat or a dog; no. I have made a promise to myself.
When the moon goes all the way round then begins to go small, and Miranda’s blood begins to flow, Master sends her away and does not allow her into his sanctum. The first time that it happens, I keep watch over her from far away so that it is safe; yes, and the second and third time, too.
As the days grow short and winter comes, I am thinking still, oh, I will protect you, Miranda. Yes, yes, I will protect you from the storm that is coming, this storm that will bring trouble to the isle as a storm once brought you and Master to these shores.
But foolish Caliban, you do not know what this trouble is.
Tricksy Ariel knows, but he is forbidden to say; and even he with his oh-so-sharp smiles and his sharp cutting words does not know what will happen when it comes.
Thou hast wits and will not use them, Ariel did say to me. Methinks thou art a greater fool than I had reckoned.
The spirit’s words are true. Since Ariel did show me to myself, I have been too angry and heart-aching to think. I have been what he did show me; only the poor dumb monster, not that Caliban that Miranda did call a friend, not that Caliban that did teach her words all over again when she was hurt.
So I think, thinkety-think-think, and what I think is: How does Ariel know that a troublesome storm is coming? Oh ho, indeed! How does Ariel know what Master plots and plans?
It comes to me that there are three ways, and the first is that only Ariel is a clever spirit and knows many secret things; and if that is the way, then oh, it is too bad for poor Caliban, he cannot find a secret that is locked inside Ariel’s tricksy head.
The second way is that Master did tell Ariel his plans, because he did need for the spirit to know them to help him; and if it is that way, then it is too bad again for poor Caliban, Master will not tell him, the savage brute. No, he will not, never ever.
Oh, but the third way … the third way is that Ariel is guilty of many, many things that he says are true of me, of cruel and cutting words like skulking and lurking and spying, and it seems that these things are a bad thing when you are ugly Caliban hiding belly-down on a balcony or crouching hidden around a corner, but not when you are oh-so-pretty Ariel floating like a cloud or blowing like a whooshity breeze.
Ha!
And if it is that way, if Ariel did learn what he knows by spying, then it may be that I can learn it, too.